innovation

Culture. “Culture” is one of those terms. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it, right? I mean, we all understand what we’re talking about here, don’t we? I’d bet if you and I polled 10 people on the street, we’d get 10 different interpretations for culture. In the course of my work, […]

The area of collaborative innovation is a natural extension of the social business movement. It’s the extension of social into purposeful collaboration, a term Alan Lepofsky uses to describe the evolution of the social business market. In the innovation-focused radio show, Women Who Innovate, host LeAnna Carey, innovation expert John Lewis and I talk about […]

Previously, I’ve described Why Crowdsourcing Works. Crowdsourcing is a case where you get many people who don’t one another collaborating toward a defined outcome.To reiterate the principle points about the value of crowdsourcing: Diverse inputs drive superior solutions Cognitive diversity requires spanning gaps in social networks Simple enough, yet actually a rich field for work and […]

At the 2014 HYPE Innovation Managers Forum in Bonn, I hosted a roundtable that looked at Involving Customers in the Innovation Process. There were over a dozen different corporations represented in the discussion. To spur the conversation, I mapped the points for customer involvement as: What customers want (jobs-to-be-done) ideas (open innovation) Feedback on options (collaborative design) As […]

Innovation requires something new that changes the way in which an activity gets done. In this formulation, ideation is the processus maximus, the best way to get something new. It properly is the most frequent mode of innovation. It delivers results. But sometimes, it’s good to shake things up. Change up the routine to refresh the sources of […]

Finally, remember Innovation won’t come from plans or people outside your company – it will be found in the people you already have inside who understand your company’s strengths and its vulnerabilities. Steve Blank, Esade Business School Commencement Speech I think Steve Blank – well-respected thinker on innovation and entrepreneurship – has hit a key point […]

Cash, gift cards, electronics, extravagant trips…these are the rewards that make people innovate, no? Tee them up, announce their availability and let innovative minds go to work. When I say “rewards” and “innovation”, is that what springs to your mind? You’re not alone. It’s the default our minds run to. Maybe we’ve watched too many […]

If you’re familiar with the story of Gmail, you know – for a fact – that it was a 20% time employee project by Paul Buchheit. A little bottom-up experimentation that grew into something big. Surprise! That story is wrong. It was a desire by Google, the company, to offer its own email. From Harry McCracken’s great piece How […]

On the LinkedIn Front End of Innovation group, I saw this post: Interesting (and heated) discussions @ Unleashing Innovation Summit in Amsterdam earlier in the month: Incremental innovation is NOT innovation – it’s just marketing. REAL innovation is breakthrough/transformational… Agree or not? I’ve seen this debate before. Attempts to finally, once-and-for-all establish just where improvement […]

Innovation, done right, is an interactive flow of diverse contributions. For sure, it is a process of building on the knowledge, perspectives and heuristics of multiple people. It’s in this diversity where novel solutions emerge. But there’s another aspect to it. Think of innovation as a multi-act play. One in which distinct personalities enter the […]

When will a customer decide your innovative product or service is worth adopting? It’s a question that marketers, strategists and others spend plenty of time thinking about. The factors are myriad and diverse. In this post, let’s examine two primary elements that influence both if an innovation will be adopted, and when it would happen: Decision weights assigned […]

Crowdsourcing is a method of solving problems through the distributed contributions of multiple people. It’s used to address tough problems that happen everyday. Ideas for new opportunities. Ways to solve problems. Uncovering an existing approach that addresses your need. Time and again, crowdsourcing has been used successfully to solve challenges. But…why does it work? What’s […]

Inside out just doesn’t fit right Ever run into this deductive reasoning? Customers like our existing products and our company We are building a new product that reflects the priorities of a company executive Therefore, customers will like our new product It’s a clear violation of the First Law of Product: Customers decide what products they […]

In talking about jobs-to-be-done here, I sometimes think that all I’m doing is stating the obvious. I mean, isn’t it obvious that you’d create something that helped fulfill a need or desire? What else would you do? But I’ve seen in my own work experience, and across a multitude of initiatives in other industries, cases […]

Reading this thought piece from the Silicon Valley Product Group, The End of Requirements, I saw this point about latent needs: Unrealized needs (also called “latent needs”) are those solutions where customers may not even be aware they even have the need until after they see and experience the solution. Examples include digital video recorders, […]